AARP just released a very inter­est­ing brain health research studybased on 1,200 online inter­views con­ducted in August 2014. Key find­ings include:

Main­tain­ing a healthy lifestyle is impor­tant to all con­sumers (99% find it at least some­what impor­tant). Brain health is the sec­ond most impor­tant com­po­nent in main­tain­ing a healthy lifestyle, after heart health (37% find brain health most impor­tant while 51% find heart health most impor­tant). Younger con­sumers Read the rest of this entry »

“Not so long ago, peo­ple kept age­ing brains active through read­ing and writ­ing, talk­ing with friends and fam­ily, and per­haps play­ing cards or doing puz­zles. Now a rapidly grow­ing num­ber are tak­ing a high-tech approach to cog­ni­tive main­te­nance, through com­puter pro­grams designed to stim­u­late the brain… Read the rest of this entry »

Dec 14, 2012Comments Off on Maximizing brain fitness and mental well-being improves both public health and individual quality of life

In two inno­v­a­tive pilot stud­ies, Ian Gotlib and his col­leagues at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Cal­i­for­nia, showed that brain train­ing can be used to help elim­i­nate depres­sion, even before it starts. They stud­ied young girls (10 to 14 year old) whose moth­ers were depressed and who thus were at higher risk of devel­op­ing depres­sion them­selves later-on. The girls had not expe­ri­enced depres­sion per se but already showed behav­iors typ­i­cal of depressed brains, such as over­re­ac­tion to neg­a­tive stim­uli. Read the rest of this entry »